You can walk right down the very roads they walked and you can feel the ruts from the iron chariot wheels. You can really get a sense of the beauty living in this little coastal town in the first century. But it is also sobering because…

many people suffered and died here on the last day when Mt. Vesuvius blew up and covered the town in small rocks, ash, and then molten rock. Here is a plaster cast made of one of the bodies left in the destruction after Pompeii had been rediscovered in the middle 1700s. It’s a heartbreaking pose of self-preservation, but alas, the person didn’t make it.

In spite of this harsh reality this is a spectacular place to visit and I am eternally grateful for my sister making me go on the last day of our trip! I’m hoping to visit again and add Herculaneum to the archeological sites to see as it was another town covered by this same eruption.